GAMEPLAY - changed scoring rules so that it is not an advantage to intentionally die on Seraph in some situations. Previously death would give base 50% of the battle’s score. Now it’s 25%.

ACCESSIBILITY - added an option to disable camera shake.

ENGINE - added a failsafe to avoid losing your overall unlock progress in the very rare situation where the game crashed while saving your metagame progress.

TEXT - fixed a few Chinese translations.

TEXT - fixed unlocalized label in the Logbook.

BUG FIX - fixed relatively common softlock when mousing over a card in hand while the Sentient’s card draw Revenge ability is triggering.

BUG FIX - fixed credits achievement not unlocking.

BUG FIX - made some changes in the game client to behave better if there are ever future server issues. We resolved some server issues earlier in the day but this will help keep the single player experience smooth if server issues ever come back again.

Just has my first run with Stygian Guard. I did great until Seraph. Didn’t set up well enough and tried to be cute. Didn’t protect Tethys well enough and got no spell weakness on the boss. It was easily rectified. Just goes to show how quickly a run can fall apart. All part of the learning experience.

Sorry? FWIW, I have been getting my ad handed to me repeatedly since unlocking Stygian Guard. Made it to Seraph once in the last 7-8 runs, but couldn’t get the Card I needed Into my hands, despite having two copies with permafrost. Everything else has been, well, a Train wreck. And this is just Covenant 2

I’ve won at covenant 9, always using random faction selection. I think 7 of the 10 wins involved Stygian, and 3 were specifically Stygian/Awoken. That’s just total easy mode for my playstyle. (Awoken/Stygian is pretty smooth sailing too.)

Thoughts so far:

The random starting cards from covenant 1 onward bother me less than I thought. Sure, there’s time when it means there’s unplayable garbage in your deck. But the game is very generous with deck culling capabilities, and it really doesn’t matter whether you’re culling out a card that doesn’t work all or that’s merely underpowered. And it’s pretty hard to lose the game, or even get into a bad situation, before you’ve had time to fix the deck. But it does at least force you into thinking about why some of these cards exist.

(E.g. I was forced to play with the card that gives a unit 3 lifesteal in exchange for 2 emberdrain. Which seems like trash; three lifesteal does not seem worth losing three energy, even with a delay. And unlike the other emberdrain cards I’d seen, you can’t arrange to have the unit get killed after you gained the benefit. The beneft from lifesteal is delayed kind of by definition. But it turned out to be a killer card for the boss rush.)

This is an easy recommendation for a friend who gave up on StS due to thinking that act 1 in StS is a pointless waste of time, and would just like to draft cards to start in act 2.

But I’m still not convinced by the upgrade system. There’s basically no tension about early/mid/late game tradeoffs in the deck building, since basically everything could be upgraded to something that’s viable in endgame. There’s also no need to delay taking cards or delay upgrades, since as far as I can tell the loot tables and shop contents are the same at every level. Just go with endgame cards right from the start.

There’s basically no tension about early/mid/late game tradeoffs in the deck building, since basically everything could be upgraded to something that’s viable in endgame.

See, I like the idea that if you do it right and build around it almost anything work. I want the starting deck/relic/champion to give me a push in a direction and see if I can make it work. The tension, for me, ifs in bringing the build together in time, and having it be strong enough and efficient enough to actually work.

Maybe you can teach me your Stygian ways. I’m not good with them. Took me 7-8 tries to beat covenant 2 with a combo of Stygian and Awoken. Win with a sting deck.

I have some success using frozen and spell weakness of the Stygian. The frozen is very useful long drawn out relentless fight the boss while the spell weakness is very powerful against the boss if you can stack it up to unleash a high damage card.

Just had my first victory, third run of the game. What got me was I had a relic that gave me +7 starting energy for cards, and I had a 10-drop 100/50 unit I had upgraded to be like 115/115 and he seemed to always be in my starting hand (I had two copies of him) so I could drop him down. I had another spell that did 5 damage to a friendly, but granted 20 armor, and it was enchanted to go to the top of the deck when played, so I could pile armor onto him every turn. It was an incredible combo. I see a “deep permalink” to my victory run, so let’s see what this does:

That spines win I had yesterday got wacky in the next to last fight. This illustrates one reason I find the tactical decisions so much more compelling than Slay the Spire.

I took a challenge with enemies starting on every floor. No problem. But what I didn’t realize (because I didn’t look) was that the units I was fighting had a death curse (extinguish) that did five points of damage to the front enemy unit when they are killed.

I started with my normal setup during that run with my low health champion behind a vinemother on the middle floor. The vinemother puts a sting card in my hand every turn. Those cards are my primary form of damage. If I lose her, I’m hosed.

After the first turn, enemies from the bottom ascend to the middle. If I don’t attack them, they kill vinemother. If I do attack them, the extinguish kills her. I look at my draw for a unit I can put in from of her to protect her. I don’t have one (I think the one I had, there wasn’t space for). Then I see Channelsong.

Channelsong is a spell that summons a unit from your draw pile and buffs their stats with an extra 20 attack and health. That sounds amazing, but this spell has a nasty habit of showing up at the end of the deck when there are no units to draw. But not this time. I play Channelsong and pull a…Molluscmage?

Now, a Molluscmage is a 7 atk/ 1 health buff unit you put in the back, because it’s fragile. But in a moment of prescience I can’t explain to you, I had enhanced the attack of this little guy by 10 (17/1) and made it endless, which means that unlike normal units in this game, if it dies, it goes to the top of the draw pile (typically, dead units are just gone for the rest of the battle).

So now I have a 37/21 tank mage that gets drawn again the following turn when killed, and another that is 17/1, because I had duplicated the unit. Using those two, I’m able to swap them into different spots as they are killed and save the day.

I loved Slay the Spire and this one looks pretty nice. Battling my inner self of getting with the 20% discount or waiting since who knows when I’d actually start playing it. There is a reason the Humble Choice is usually underwhelming for me…I tend to have already picked up the ones that I really wanted.

Heh, I had that artifact and the one that dazes on top row and still lost my most recent run (my first with umbra). I wanted a multistrike upgrade and didn’t get. Could not manage to work around it. In retrospect I really had too much riding on needing that. I just didn’t have the damage output for the last fight